A History of Hope When Americans Have Dared to Dream of a Better Future

This book chronicles American history through the stories of the individuals and movements that dreamed of a better future and then took action to make that dream a reality, arguing that the much heralded American spirit was not born as a gift of our founding, but was forged through our adversity and triumphs. From colonial revolutionaries to abolitionists, labor organizers to suffragists, progressives to civil rights activists, it was individuals and movements who dared to go against the American majority that both guarded and created our best national self.

James W. Fraser is Professor of History and Education and Director of the Center for Innovation in Urban Education at Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts. He is the author of Between Church and State.

Introduction: Keeping Hope Alive * Foreword: The First Revolution: Taos, 1680 * "We Hold These Truths": The Revolutionaries of 1776 * Utopian Communities * Mexico in the United States: War and Peace, Conquest and Community * Rebellious Slaves, Free Blacks, and Abolitionists * Reconstruction: The First Civil Rights Era * Feminists and Suffragists * The Beginnings of Organized Labor * The Many Faces of the Progressive Era * Hope in Hard Times * The Second Civil Rights Movement * Afterword: The Movement Continues
Introduction: Keeping Hope Alive * Foreword: The First Revolution: Taos, 1680 * "We Hold These Truths": The Revolutionaries of 1776 * Utopian Communities * Mexico in the United States: War and Peace, Conquest and Community * Rebellious Slaves, Free Blacks, and Abolitionists * Reconstruction: The First Civil Rights Era * Feminists and Suffragists * The Beginnings of Organized Labor * The Many Faces of the Progressive Era * Hope in Hard Times * The Second Civil Rights Movement * Afterword: The Movement Continues